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NX-01 Thoughts

This idea randomly came to me, so I thought I'd quickly doodle it up and see how people react to it. While Doug Drexler's NX-01 is a beautiful ship, it borrowed the twin-boom motif from the Akira instead of establishing it's own motif, something we'd never seen before in a hero ship. My doodle is far from beautiful, but it does establish its own motif - a transition phase between the warp ring and the warp nacelle. Does it suit you, or is it ridiculous?

(BTW if this has been done before, let me know. I searched for prior art and didn't find anything, but that doesn't mean it isn't out there.)

Generally the only ring and nacelle combos I have seen are giant rings with the nacelles on the port and starboard sides.
Your's actually reminds me of aircraft turbines.
I have to wonder the usefulness of the rings there. Generally the rings contain the warp coils. Unless it is some proto-bussard collector.

I don't care about your personal head canon. It's has no purpose here.

I'm sure there's a way to explain the functionality - if we're willing to believe the warp bubble can be transported ahead (transwarp), anything is possible. I'd guess this NX-01 is analogous to the Republic XF-84h Thunderscreech, a plane that attempted to combine the fuel economy of propellors with the speed of jets by having both -

Hopefully my NX-01 performed better, but at least it has its own unique visual motif.

Is there an official story on how we went from nacelles on the Phoenix, to the warp ring on XCV-330, and back to nacelles? I always thought the warp ring was more primitive, but that would mean the Vulcans were one of the most primitive races in the Enterprise era. On the other hand, if the ring is more advanced, than even in the TNG era most races haven't caught up with the Vulcans.

Memory Alpha has an explanation which I assume is non-canon, and doesn't make much sense to me - the warp ring is not manueverable enough at warp for an exploratory vessel. If it's not manueverable enough for an explorer, how can it be manueverable enough for a combat vessel? I don't think the Vulcans are only building luxury liners when they're feuding with the Andorians. The Vulcan warp ring has to at least be on par with Andorian nacelles, and Klingon and Romulan nacelles . . .

I had to go to image search but I suppose you're talking about this design -

But I'm thinking more of this -

There's nothing special about my design at this point other than the idea of putting the warp ring on the nacelle. I wanted to see if that intrigued people or if it's too ridiculous to contemplate. Maybe I should do one nacelle slung under the saucer, but to be an Enterprise it would probably have to be a twin nacelle ship with the warp engines above the saucer.

I could try making the rings bigger and intersect them like the triple ring Vulcan ship -

On another note, here's a kitbash that apparently has a warp ring and nacelles -

Neat concept, I've definitely never seen a nacelle in ring configuration for the engines. It definitely says something interesting, though I can't figure it out.

I figure Vulcan ring engines are just different, not more primitive, and that the Earth ring ship is an experiment in Vulcan style warp engines which ultimately went no where. I like to think Vulcan ring engines are one huge warp coil (or made from an inner and outer coil), so a ring over nacelle would be one huge coil leading a series of smaller coils. I still have no idea what the advantage would be, but I have no idea what the advantage of sail and sphere engines are, and can only speculate about short versus long nacelles.